...this launched today.

I’m starting to get frustrated by the way in which the debate about internet privacy is currently being waged. There appears to be a constant media buzz about how we’re all at terrible risk from hawkish advertisers who are just waiting to swoop in, steal our browsing history and then make millions from it.

I hope I’m not alone in my disdain for this alarmist and arguably ignorant view of how the Internet works.

I should be clear of course; I’m not against internet privacy. Neither am I advocating any kind of Big Brother-esque government monitoring of internet traffic. My beef lies with the panicky reactions we’ve seen from the media, governments, the EU and many internet users in regards to internet privacy.

As a marketing graduate I often find myself idly assesing the marketing strategies that tech companies employ. It’s an industry that's fairly set in its ways - Taiwanese companies tend to think a CG picture of a pretty girl with an ornate sword or huge gun can sell anything, no matter what we in the West say. Meanwhile, here in the West, we can't help but work the touch-feely lifestyle angle - 'this laptop is good because you can help the kids with their homework on it!'

My interest was piqued therefore when I saw Nintendo’s latest Super Mario advert which marks the 25th anniversary of Mario series of games. The advert is initially quite unremarkable, showing men and women of all ages, some of whom are celebrities, talking about the Mario games and their memories of them. So far, so Nintendo; the company has been using softer, more personal adverts targeted at casual and first time gamers for a while now.

What I did find remarkable though was the end of the advert which contained the message the ad was there to convey - ‘Super Mario Brothers, part of the family since 1985’. It’s the first time I’ve seen a computer game use a heritage message, a message that emphasises the history and longevity of a brand or product.

I recently built myself a new home PC which, as I'm sure most of you know, resulted in a lightning-quick computer. There's a level of snappiness and responsiveness that you get from a newly built PC, which you just can't seem to maintain, no matter how often you de-fragment your hard disk or clean your registry.

As a result, I knew that I wanted to create a disk image of my PC in its freshly installed state. This would essentially act as a time capsule, preserving an exact copy of my PC in its virgin state until I needed it. Then, when my Windows install got bloated and unresponsive in the future, I could simply copy the image back the other way, theoretically restoring my PC to exactly the same state it was in when I built it.

Yep, forgive us for feeling a little smug but we've been putting a selection of Sandy Bridge chips through their paces over the last few days. Obviously we can’t say anything about the numbers we're seeing but needless to say we'll be well prepared to give a full and comprehensive review when the CPUs launch.

Obviously the fact that we're testing these CPUs must mean we've got some compatible motherboards in the labs too, so you can also expect a veritable bevy of motherboard reviews at launch too.

As most of our long-term readers will know, we produce a PC hardware buyer’s guide each month, detailing our views on what PC components you should be buying and why. It’s a great opportunity for us to summarise our findings of the last month and for you guys to tell us that we're wrong.

This month though there are simply so many new releases just out of reach over the upgrade hill that we simply didn't think it was worth doing December buyers guide.

Dear Joe

Thanks for your kind letter the other month, it was very nice of you to think of me and Harry while away on your Minecraft excursion. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to turn down your offer to join you however.

I don't mean to appear rude by turning down your offer, but believe me when I say I'd rather stab rusty forks into my own eyeballs than toil away away in an imaginary world, building nothing of any value, consequence or benefit.

QWERTY Warriors is incredibly simple but deceptively addictive. As you can probably tell from the title it's a typing game in which you play some sort of space marine - a space marine with the most powerful but awkward gun in the world.

Enemies appear on the edge of the map and advance towards our brave hero in the centre of the screen. Once they get close enough they open fire on you, slowly blowing chunks out of your health bar.

Macro keys on keyboards and mice are almost always aimed at the enthusiast MMO player. Their function is to allow users to execute a long chain of keyboard or mouse commands at the touch of a single button, which is a useful ability in games such as WoW. As a result macro keys are becoming a common feature on gaming mice and keyboards.

It was confusing for Clive then to hear me say that I love macro keys, even though I don’t play any of the MMO games which they are classically associated with. This is because I put my macro keys on my G15 at home to a far less entertaining use than which they were originally intended - entering common information on websites.

Over the course of the last week or so I’ve been trying to play Monkey Island 2: Special Edition. I say trying because frankly I’ve been finding it pretty hard going. I’m not even sure whether what I’ve been doing even constitutes playing; maybe my first sentence would be better re-worded slightly.

Over the course of the last week or so I’ve been swearing continuously at Monkey Island 2: Special Edition.